Kilmar's Blood
by Moonraker One
Summary: Can one decision, seemingly insignificant, made differently, affect everything? Can King Cold's youngest son, one of the most evil ever, find redemption, possibly love?
1. Chapter 1

Kilmar's Blood

By Moonraker One

A/N: Can one decision, one seemingly insignificant decision, when made differently, affect everything? Can a truly evil being be cleansed by a defeat that would usually cause only more hatred to brew? These questions will be answered (hopefully) by the end of this story.

PROLOGUE – The Demise of the Tyrant

Over ten million hearts beat slowly, captured in the moment by a mixture of fear and hope, with excitement building with every passing moment. One gigantic screen onto which the scene of battle was projected by a somewhat old holographic television projector displayed for everyone to see the happenings of one of the most difficult battles ever. Two superpowers tangled in deadly combat, with the winner winning only the chance to live the rest of his life, for this was a fight to the finish. Only to kill your foe would be the end of it. Fists and feet struck their intended targets with impossible force, doing their necessary damage to the opponent of the attacker. The residents of Saiyan Colony S117-Sigma had left their homes to watch the battle of the century unfold between two of the most powerful beings in existence: Frieza, tyrant son of King Cold, the Cardarian who had conquered most of the known universe, and Son Goku, a Saiyan from a humble home on a backwater rim-star planet called Earth. One held the future of the Saiyan people's hopes and dreams on his shoulders, the other, wanted only to continue his lifelong goal of conquering all that was in existence. From the safety of hundreds of parsecs away, on a colony protected from Cold's empire by intergalactic law, male, female, and children Saiyans of all ages watched and silently prayed to Romthaon, the Saiyan king of Gods, that their savior would win.

A great distance away, on a small planet called Namek, the battle that would inevitably decide the fate of the universe had been going on for a very long time now. The better part of fourteen hours had been spent on one of the most violent combats ever, and the final part of the five remaining minutes that the planet had left before inevitable destruction the final blows were traded back and forth with incalculable speed and force beyond what anyone had seen. Goku, with blood trickling from him, saw his opponent gathering two discs of energy on his hands and calibrating them to hone in on his foe's precise energy pattern. Frieza grinned wickedly and tossed them with tremendous force, Goku barely having enough time to move out of the way of them, only to find that they began to follow his every move.

"It's useless trying to run, Saiyan monkey!" Frieza shouted, his insults cascading from his mouth as he watched his opponent attempt to flee from the discs of power. "They will track you no matter where you go!" As Goku fled, he began to realize slowly that he could not escape them. However, something of an idea struck him at the last moment before he would have been sliced in two.

With a last minute desperation dive out of the way, he began to fly at maximum speed directly at his evil opponent. The discs held tightly on his trail as he whooshed through the sky directly at Frieza. The tyrant drew back his fist in wait for Goku to be close enough to strike at. The Saiyan hero grinned assuredly as he stopped immediately in front of the tyrant just for a brief moment, then instantly flew away. Frieza's eyes widened as he realized too late what his foe's plan was. The entire universe seemed to hold still for a brief moment; the air stilled, the ground quieted, even the raging storm that was going on within the planet itself seemed to cool only for a brief few microseconds…before white-hot energy sliced painfully through layers of flesh and bone.

The tyrant that had killed so many found himself sliced cleanly in two with his lower body and his left hand gone. Goku began to walk away. Wiping blood from his forehead, and using the illumination of his Super Saiyan form, the mythical form that only once in a thousand years could be reached, he began to look around for a way off Namek. He glanced only a moment at the enemy he'd just dealt with; thinking of a life wasted killing others, and the broken, beaten tyrant lying on the ground with fear of death painted all over his face, he shook his head in sorrow and continued to walk on. He hardly thought of his position as he slowly left the battle scene one step at a time; he had become what Frieza had been for so long; he was the most powerful being in the universe. But, for some reason, it didn't bring him pride, it merely reminded him of his responsibility to the less fortunate.

"W…wait, Saiyan!"

Goku turned around only slightly, twisting his head around instead of his entire body. He did not have the intention of listening very long. He coughed one time to clear his throat and frowned angrily at the tyrant. "What do you _want_, Frieza?" he demanded. This tyrant would soon meet his deserved fate; couldn't he just spare Goku the sob story and die in peace? "You realize you brought this upon yourself."

The evil being began to beg for his life. "Please…please spare me…"

Goku's eyes widened; he wasn't _serious_, was he?

Unfortunately, Goku couldn't chalk it up to a last few words of a dying person, as Frieza continued. "Please, Saiyan! Spare me!" Goku turned completely around to face the tyrant.

"WHY SHOULD I GIVE YOU MERCY? You spared no one! All you did your entire life is destroy!" his angry words of hatred towards Frieza came as such a stark contrast to what he usually displayed.

"P…please, Saiyan, I'll change, just spare me!"

Goku weighed the options; it was _possible_, the evil one could change…

No. Goku shook his head as he thought of it. Why would someone who's been evil their entire life change? Why would an evil being, one that had ended so many lives without a thought ever consider doing something good? It was not possible. Goku realized slowly he was only fooling himself to think of such a possibility. And Frieza, for the first time in his life, began to cry as he saw the Saiyan who held his fate in his hands weigh the options. It was the first time that he had ever genuinely wanted to change; it would be better than death. He had at least a very basic idea of what hell would have to be like, and he'd rather swear off his evil than suffer forever.

"_PLEASE, SAIYAN_!" tears came from Frieza's cold eyes as he begged for forgiveness as he lay in a spreading pool of his own blood. He thought of what he would do; he would denounce his father's ways, and go live on some planet where no one would bother him, and he'd never do another bad deed again. He just prayed that he would be spared. He brought his gaze directly into the Saiyan's eyes. There was genuine warmth and compassion in his regretful eyes, unlike their normal state. "_PLEASE_ save me!"

Goku could sense that there was no ki left within Frieza, save for his necessary life force, which was diminishing. He knew that the threat of Frieza attacking him from behind was over, since he had not the ki to fly, much less throw an energy beam. Therefore, he lifted his eyes skyward. "God," he shouted, "my job here is done." His face, borrowing an almost infinitesimal amount of Frieza's evil, turned his usually compassionate eyes into a cold stare directly at the tyrant, whose tears were falling down. "Do with this monster as you will." With the finishing of his statement to the heavenly father, he turned and flew away, leaving the tyrant on a lifeless plain to die alone; the worst kind of death of all.

Frieza, second son of King Cold, mightiest warlord in the universe, knew he had only a few minutes left to live, before he died of blood loss. He knew better than to fear the planet's demise; Cardarians were mostly immune. He would die in the vacuum of space all alone, and the damned monkey would find the Ginyu force pods and escape. He clenched his right fist as his blood began to boil in anger at his defeat at the hands of such a lowly life form. As he thought of the cruel ways he should have been able to kill this monkey, his thoughts began to slowly turn to the truth.

It HAD been his evil ways that would doom him; that's what he'd always heard from the beings he heartlessly killed. They'd always told him that sooner or later, someone would come down from heaven that even he could not beat, that would strike him down with the same mercy he'd shown everyone else: none. At this point, his tears began to fall like rain as he screamed out his pained cries for forgiveness.

Goku searched as far as his eyes would allow across the plains of Namek, searching for anything that could get him off the planet. He began to lose hope after a few seconds, and then he saw the tyrant's space ship. _All right! I'm home free!_ he thought, flying towards the ship. He was just about there when he heard something.

_Don't be stupid,_a voice cried out in his head. It surprised him to know that it was Frieza, giving him advice! _My ship is defunct; Vegeta blew up the engines._ _The damned thing won't work. Find the Ginyu force pods and get off this rock._

He was at a loss for what to say. _Frieza…_ he mentally replied, desperately thinking of an answer to give to the tyrant. _…thank you._ Flying at top speed, he found the pods right before they would have fallen into a sea of magma. Having no time to enter a course, he simply tapped buttons at a furious pace, doing nothing at first but inevitably activating the engine of the pod and taking off into space. He thought of the way he'd left the tyrant to die, all alone, but then again the evil Frieza had never given anyone else any mercy, so he didn't deserve to get any in his final moments.

On a deserted plain on the surface of Namek, where one of the most feared evils in the universe lay in an ever-spreading pool of thick purple blood, a thought of prayer got converted to a verbal one, in the mere moments before a single, final tear of regret fell from his face and onto the ground. _Please forgive me_, he thought. Closing his eyes, he lay his head back and fell unconscious. Not a second later, a violent explosion tore the once peaceful planet to shreds.


	2. Chapter 2

Kilmar's Blood

by Moonraker One

A/N: Sorry about the year-long wait between the prologue and this chapter. I moved twice, went through a family crisis, and my mother's surgery, all while I was working on this, so it had to be completely redone. I am aware of the huge gap I'm creating between the time Frieza got rebuilt in the series and in this fanfic. The fact that he shows up MUCH sooner is a plot element.

CHAPTER ONE – The Evil One's Reconstruction

The deathly blackness of space seemed almost as devoid of light as Frieza's dark heart. For the longest time—he did not know how long he floated—he wondered if he was alive or dead. Secretly he hoped he was alive, because if he was it would mean that he'd been given a chance to prove himself; and that was worth all the suffering in the universe. However, he did not know for sure and as such he wondered what his punishment would be. The seconds ticked away as hours to his mind, and he felt cold. Not only was the chill passing through him due to the low temperature of the vacuum of outer space, but also from the blood that had drained from his body. How he held on to the small fabric of life he had within him, only the creator of time knew.

Long after his mind slipped out of its ability to think, a pair of mechanical hands latched on to him and pulled him aboard a rather large spaceship belonging to King Cold, his father. Aboard the pride of Cold's fleet, a team of Cardaria's best scientists worked diligently to restore the huge amount of blood lost from their mightiest young prince, to speak nothing of the legs and hand he had lost. Once they had restored blood to the parts of his body, they began to attach a mechanical pelvic area to the lower part of his torso where his real one had been removed, as well as a pair of cybernetic legs and a workable hand to his left wrist. His mind wandered closer and farther from death as the surgery went on, and no one was positive he would even live (to say nothing of his ever being normal again), but hopes were high. All the while the procedure was going on, a nervous King Cold stood watch from a position above the operating room, never giving up hope his son would make it through.

The final implant found its way onto the lower part of the abdomen area, exactly where the organic flesh ended and the cybernetic lower body began. Its purpose, as stated by the scientists working on Frieza, was to regulate the non-organic components' interactions with the organic tissue. The head surgeon/scientist, having applied all the necessary components, wiped his brow and connected his patient's lower body main processor to the main connection to the spinal column, and hooked it up to a very thick cable attached to a menacing-looking power unit. Once activated, Frieza's own neuro-electrical signals would be sufficient to power it, but an initial jolt of power was required. _Here goes nothing,_ he thought. The future of his career, as well as his life, depended on the surgery working out properly.

The lights in the ship flickered for a moment as the massive power unit sucked a huge amount of electricity out of the ship's power core. So much so, in fact, that the ship's main computer had to activate the auxiliary fusion engine before the systems returned to normal. After the first burst of power, the cybernetic implants on Frieza kicked on, and the connection to the power device was disconnected, with everyone on the operating floor holding their breath. None were more worried than King Cold; would his son's new body parts function with just the energy from his neurological organ system?

Slowly, like the receding tide, Frieza's eyes crawled open.

Every held breath in the room got released at the same time. The entire crew had their hopes riding on the younger son of their king and whether or not he survived the operation. A wave of cheers blew in, a typhoon of yells thankful not of the fact that Frieza survived, but that such allowed them to live. Had the tyrant son died, what likely to happen would have been annihilation of the crew.

"Not too quickly, Lord Frieza," a second unit surgeon advised, as the newly-resurrected Cardarian got to a seated position. He examined his new lower body and arm; a series of thoughts came about. The most important of these became known when a grin came on his face. The holy master had decided to take pity on him after all. He may never have children of his own, but at the very least he did not die as was left to. The next series of thoughts revolved around his current station as emperor of a huge array of planets, and who to recruit as his servants all died against the Saiyans and their friends. Inevitably, he arrived on his would-be assassin.

_You almost got me, Goku,_ Frieza thought, _but it would seem that I'm alive. I find that amazing._ He shook his head to clear it of dreariness. He then stood up out of bed, landing on his cybernetic feet. He immediately glanced up at his father. "Have you tracked any space pods leaving the planet Namek before it blew up?" His inquiry startled Cold, as he did not get such from his son.

"Um, yes, my son, there was one," he answered slowly. "It headed towards Yardrat." He believed his son's next course of action to be clear. "Shall we set a course for Yardrat?"

Frieza, much to the bewilderment of his father, shook his head. "No. Set a course for Earth, father."

Cold opened one eye wider in shock. "Planet Earth? Whatever for, my son?" He folded his arms; had the battle on Namek damaged part of his son's brain? He began to seriously wonder such things. Quickly his thoughts then drifted to how fit Frieza was to continue ruling over his planets, and all the necessary steps if he wasn't. His son's well-being didn't very much cross his mind at all.

"I..."he tried to come up with a good excuse, "...have business there."

Sneering wickedly, Cold became completely assured of his son's actions. "CHANGE COURSE!" he announced to the crew.

Frieza loudly retorted, "NO!" To this Cold's facial expression changed dramatically. His state of mind completely blown out of equilibrium, he couldn't speak, merely looked at his son. "I...mean, I am going alone. Ready my space traveler."

Cold blinked a few times. "Son, I must protest."

His son lifted a defiant hand. "No, my mind is made up."

Within a matter of minutes he sat in his private space cruiser. Much more elaborate than a typical spaceship, it had a number of technologies that would come in handy, although he didn't care about that at all. He sat down with the door sealed, staring at the floor. His mind awash in the throes of existential questions, he tried pondering the events of the past seventy-two hours. The near-death experience had taught him how meaningless his life had been, and he saw how pathetic his actions were, not to mention cruel. The Saiyan warrior's final words before leaving stung. _God, my job here is done. Do with this monster as you will._ His life hadn't even been worth taking by the man himself. That is how pitiful he knew it had been. He also knew what had to be next.

"If I have been spared," he whispered, "then perhaps I have a chance. A chance to, maybe not make up for what I've done, but at least change where I'm going." He smiled and chuckled a moment; the old him would, upon hearing these words, seeing these thoughts and actions, murder the present him for being so weak. However, he believed it to be true; as the warrior had said, it wasn't weak to value life.

_I wonder, he thought to himself. Goku and those friends of his didn't need scouters to find powers, and they seemed to sense energy with their minds. That would be extremely useful. He leaned back in his ship. What an experience. I never would've imagined thinking the way I am now. He thought of his new view on life, handed to him from his worst enemy. His old reaction would've been anger and a violent outburst, but thinking of his new course of action—and never having to eliminate planets again—he found such a prospect to be bizarrely liberating._

He clicked a few buttons on his ship's panel and with a burst, left the bay. He put a blinking, line-shaped metal clip on his forehead, and slipped into sleep. The computer monitored his vitals as he went into stasis until the trip ended.

A mild electrical charge brought him out of stasis. He resumed consciousness and sat up, looking around. Hmm, I've been brought out of stasis prematurely, and there's no crisis, he noticed. Must be a mechanical problem; I should've gotten that checked out. He sat on the edge of his bed. He decided to try something unique. Closing his eyes, he imagined the center of his being. His outer layers of conscious thought faded like old photographs but much faster, leaving him with a blackness of void contained by outer flesh and inner muscle. Inside this private sanctuary of his soul, he saw a glowing pool of light. It flowed via a series of rivers of similar light, traveling to all corners of his being. Providing his parts with the needed life force. He focused on it, and found it to be pliable. It molded and shifted according to his will. With repeated meditation, he came back over and over again over the few days until he gained the ability to focus and change his energy, as well as sense that of others.

Suppressing his power, Frieza touched down on a plain on planet Earth, exactly nine days after leaving his father's ship. At once he stepped out of his ship and looked around; teeming with life, the place seemed just fit for someone as good about protecting the living as Goku. He pressed a button on his pelvis, and at once, a solid hologram made him look like he did before being sliced in half. Looking completely organic would be very helpful; he doubted he'd blend in, but the stark difference in color between cybernetic and organic wouldn't help. Walking a bit proved easy enough at first (the grassy hills weren't challenging), but he quickly realized he picked a hell of a part of the planet to land on. If he didn't fly, he wouldn't be able to cover much ground to get anywhere populated, but if he DID, he'd risk alerting the friends of the Saiyan. Regardless, he decided to torment himself a bit for what he had previously done.

So he trudged on. The proud former emperor covered a lot of ground his first day, but as night fell and turned into morning, and that turned into night yet again, and another morning after that, he found himself feeling quite miserable. Invariably, four and a quarter days of walking—with NO food, as the animals seemed smart enough to stay far from him—and putting himself through a masochistic trial not by fire but nature, and he found each footstep twice as hard as the previous. Collapsing seemed labored, even; he breathed ragged breaths as he crawled, tearing tiny trenches with his fingers as he tried to force his body forward. Had he the strength, he'd laugh at the irony: trading lonely death on Namek for lonely death on the Saiyan's planet of choice.

"Okay, up we go," he heard a feminine voice say, as a pair of hands grabbed under his left and right armpits, and hoisted him up, firmly. She struggled, although surprisingly not as much as he'd expect a human woman to do so, to lift him, then wrapped an arm of his around her shoulder. It was hard, as she dwarfed him by at least six inches. Acting as his legs, she helped him move forward at a reasonable pace. "You look rather foreign, mister. The white skin and purplish orbs all over ya don't look human. You from somewhere outside of this planet?"

"You...could...say that...ma'am," he uttered. "Thank...you, although you...you'd probably be better to just...leave me to...die..."

"Now, don't be an idiot, mister," she replied. "That reminds me, what's your name?"

"My name...is...Fr..." He bit his tongue purposefully. Catching himself, he realized how stupid he almost was. He played the amnesiac. "Fr...well, now that I come to think of it, I don't remember."

She sighed. "You know, I've had issues with memory loss in my family." She saw the home she lived in closing in. "See now? You almost died, and here we are, just a few more dozen feet from my family's home."

"Memory...problems? In your family?"

She adjusted her center of gravity to account for the added weight of her unknown companion. "My husband, you see, he hit his head on a rock when he was a baby; fell into a gorge. He's probably the best fighter on this planet, maybe the universe, but I wish he'd stay home a bit more."

Frieza almost choked on his saliva after hearing that. "Tell...me...ma'am," he gaspingly whispered, taking ragged breaths. His heart was pounding out of his chest as he took a calculated risk. "What's your husband's...name?"

"I don't really see any harm in telling a stranger. His name is Son Goku," she answered.

All of a sudden, Frieza wanted anywhere but here. If the Saiyan's brat got wind of him, in his current state, he'd be dead meat. He wanted to fly away after nicely thanking the woman.

She wouldn't give him the chance. "Gooohan!" she waited. "GOHAN!" No answer. "Darn son of mine, probably out playing somewhere when I TOLD HIM TO MIND HIS STUDIES!" She calmed down, in the presence of a stranger. "Sorry if I startled you."

"It's...no problem," he breathed a mild sigh; at least the brat wasn't there. She let him down slowly into a chair just inside at the dinner table.

"Since you're so hungry, I'll throw something together quickly. Any preference?"

"N..not really."

In a matter of minutes, the Cardarian had before him, a large plate of rice as well as teriyaki chicken and a large supply of some cabbage dish he'd never even seen before, and a few minutes later than that, they were all gone. He'd never eaten such a delicious dish in the course of his natural life span. Both the woman and he chatted for a period, which means he sat listening to her rant for a long time. But as time progressed, Goku's wife seemed rather preturbed with something.

"You know," she said to the former emperor, "I'm getting this strange feeling. Now don't take this the wrong way, but I get the most bizarre sense that there's something about you I don't know. Which is strange, since you seem nice enough."

Frieza looked her in the eye. "What if I were to tell you, that I know your husband, Goku, quite well, in fact?"

She instantly switched to paying attention. "Okay, I'm listening."

"Now, before I say anything else, all I know is that your husband is perfectly fine on a planet called Yardrat; I made sure to check myself. He's doing fine and you can go back to my spaceship and check yourself if you don't believe me."

She regarded him in a suspicious way. "I...uh...okay. I really don't know why, but I think I might believe you. But tell me, what exactly IS the nature of you knowing my husband?"

Frieza cringed, then gave in and told the entire story. The human woman sat with an unusual mixture of intrigue and confusion. He fully expected her to run screaming from her home, grab her son, and rally the proverbial forces against him. And the last thing he wanted, was to be chased off after going all this way.

She folded her arms. "So, let me get this straight; you almost kill my husband AND my son, you kill Krillin for a while, anyway, AND, you expect me to believe that you've turned over a new leaf and you've come here to try and make amends for what you've done?"

"I don't know if you think I'm crazy or not for saying this, but yes. I DO hope you'll react that way."

She stood up from her seat. "Well, then, 'Frieza,'" she uttered, "all I have to say is this. If you do the dishes and chop me some firewood, I'll consider your debt to me squared away. I can't speak for my husband or my son, but hell, it's a start, isn't it?"

Frieza shook his head, in sheer bewilderment. "You're...not going to run screaming from here in terror?"

She regarded him like he had gone insane. "Why should I? I haven't seen what makes you frightening, and I can only imagine what my husband will do to you if you do anything to ME, so what do I have to be afraid of, tyrant?" She grinned, accentuating the last word in her question as a tease. "Now do those dishes and chop the pile of wood behind the house. If you're lucky, I may be able to talk my son out of trying to kill you when he comes back."

Frieza burst out laughing at being reduced to a common house servant by the wife of the very enemy he almost killed. The sheer ludicrosity of it all seemed strangely like an act of the gods themselves, and the odds against such an occurrence must have been staggering. All he could do in response to it is reply, "yes, ma'am!"

_As the former tyrant got to work, Chi-Chi hung her laundry outside and sat in her chair waiting. A familiar sight came flying in. Oh dear me, she wondered, how in the hell am I going to get Gohan to understand THIS? She scratched her head. It's not like I can say, "Hi son, um, guess what? There's a guy named FRIEZA here to visit us." Yeah, THAT'D go over well._

She stood up. Her son greeted her politely. "Hey mom!" he noticed her with hands on hips. "Oh, um, let me first say, I'm terribly sorry for flying off in the middle of studies. I'll make it up the moment I'm done with the firewood."

She shook her head, adamant. "Firewood's taken care of."

Gohan stood, slightly confused. "It...is? Oh, crud, I, uh, sorry for making you do it, mom! Let me make it up to you!"

"Actually, Gohan, I found a stranger a few hills back dying of hunger, so I fed him and he's back in good shape, so he volunteered to do it for us. The dishes too."

Gohan shifted slightly. "O...kay, that's nice of him!" _Smooth, Gohan. Smooth. Now you're just likely to be put through three lessons instead of FOUR._ He waited for the inevitable anger from his mother. He decided to preempt her. "I think I should get to my lessons now."

Chi-Chi stopped him. "Now, I want you to swear to me, something."

He shook his head. "What is it?"

"I want you to swear that regardless of what I say next, you WILL NOT GET ANGRY." she sternly looked at him. "You PROMISE?"

He looked confused. Since when would _he_ get mad at his mother instead of the other way around? "I...uh, sure."

"You remember how you and your father fought on Namek? You fought some evil bad guy?"

Gohan seemed confused. Where was his mother going with this? "Yeah, how could I ever forget?"

Chi-Chi silently prayed her son wouldn't freak out. "That bad guy, uh, what's his name?"

"His name? Frieza. Like I said, how could I forget? He killed Krillin before we brought him back!"

THIS would be the point, Chi-Chi knew, where her son would freak out. "He's...uh, kind of in my kitchen."

She saw her son just snap. He didn't make a sound at all; his face just hit that expression where you know something dramatic is about to happen. Like a dam breaking he pushed her aside and rocketed in the house.

Chi-Chi heard something inside the house shatter on the floor. "Dammit, I just got through cleaning the house!" She started walking towards the door. "I swear, no respect for my new carpets!"


End file.
